* * *
The hangover wasn’t as bad as having to get on the bus with the 7 a.m. work crowd. All these Mexicans and black guys and women going to their shitty jobs, looking at me like I was some kind of stain. I closed them out and sipped my coffee and tried to ignore the lurch in my gut every time the bus stopped. Who rides the bus? I pulled my hat down low over my eyes and stared at my feet.
By the time I got off at my stop, I was feeling a little better. I walked two blocks and then through the visitor parking area of Future Sun Condos and into the administrative building where I met Assistant Deputy Manager Marco. We shook hands, and he thanked me for coming down. He also thanked me for my service and said he loved it when he could hire a veteran. I said that was great. He nodded and told me it was good PR for Future Sun Condos. He asked me if I needed anything. I told him I was fine. He said there was some coffee brewed, and I should help myself.
He went and got all the shit for the day, then came back, handed me a red sign with two handles on the back, and told me to follow him. He also had a backpack, which he opened and showed me, saying everything I needed was in there: a pair of gloves, a couple bottles of water, a bottle of sunscreen, and a red T-shirt and baseball hat with FUTURE SUN CONDOS on them. He told me the shirt and hat were my uniform, so I threw on the red shirt and replaced my OIF hat with the FUTURE SUN CONDOS one. I folded my real hat and stuffed it in my cargo pocket with my cigarettes.
“You look great,” he said. “A real go-getter.”
He led me out to his Range Rover and drove me two blocks to where he wanted me to stand, not far from the bus stop I got off at earlier. On the way, he gave me a detailed briefing on my job responsibilities: “Okay, your job is to stand here on this corner and hold the sign up so people driving by see that we’re having an open house. Now the reason why we’re paying you nine dollars instead of eight dollars is that we don’t want you to stand there with the sign like a lump, but be really animated and dance around, twirl the sign around or do whatever you have to so you grab people’s attention, got that?”
He said the gloves were optional, but I should wear them to keep from getting blisters. He took the sign from me and showed me his technique, whirling it and lifting it and shoving it out in front of him like he was a cheerleader. Then he handed it back to me and told me to show him my stuff.
He said, “You should be good at this since you were in the army, and it’s just like when you twirl your rifles around and stuff at parades.”
I thought for a second about twirling his head off his neck but instead just spun the sign around and did a little quarterback dance. He grinned at me. “Good job, you’ll get the hang of it yet. Just keep at it, kid.”
I held the sign and moved it around some more, and he told me that was good, but he wanted more feeling, more soul, and I should really go all out. “That’s why we let people listen to their Walkman or whatever, so they get in the mood. It’s like, just rock out. Like in Top Gun.”
I nodded.
Then he made sure I had my cellphone and told me to call him if I needed anything. He said he’d be by in a couple hours to check on me and see how I was doing. “Great, thanks,” I said, and as he drove off, I stood there on the corner wishing all the kids who thought I was a loser in high school could see me now.
Still, job = money and money = cigarettes, and it got me out of the house, and it was only temporary anyway, so I remembered what the drill sergeants always told me: “Play the Game.” I lit a smoke and listened to some music and waved the sign around. It was a great feeling standing there moving my sign up and down like a retard, while cars I’d never be able to afford drove past ignoring me.
At first I jiggled the sign and swung it around, shuffled my feet, tried to pretend I had some dignity, then after a while I just stood there with the sign and jerked up and down. I did that for a couple hours.
When the juice on my iPod ran out I started thinking of movie quotes: “Nothing is over! Nothing! You just don’t turn it off! You asked me, I didn’t ask you!” “Stanley, see this? This is this. This ain’t something else. This is this. From now on, you’re on your own.” “For me this life is nothing! We had a code, you watch my back, I watch yours. Back here there’s nothing!” “Back here I can’t even hold a job PARKING CARS!” “June twenty-ninth. I gotta get in shape. Too much sitting has ruined my body. Too much abuse has gone on for too long. From now on there will be fifty pushups each morning, fifty pullups. There will be no more pills, no more bad food, no more destroyers of my body. From now on will be total organization.”
Just then a silver Range Rover pulled up to the corner, and it was Marco, looking all pissy. “Hey!” he shouted. “What the hell’s going on?! I’m not paying you good money to just stand there! You gotta move that goddamn sign around like I told you! You got that?”
“Roger,” I said.
He shook his head and told me he’d be back to check up on me again, and I’d better have that sign moving when he does.
I nodded and started dancing the sign around, then when the Range Rover turned the corner I went back to just standing there. I sorta spaced out, staring at the horizon where the long boulevard and the streetlights and the low smog haze all seemed to melt into a shitty gray nothing, like not even static but just the smear of existence out there on the edge of the concrete. Maybe that was tomorrow, like it was yesterday, even though I kept telling myself that tomorrow was something else, even if I didn’t know what it was. The edge of the sky in Los Angeles looked just like the edge of the sky in Iraq, near the cities, the way the oil towers burned off into the air, and the handle on the sign almost for a second felt like the grip of my 240, and I almost felt the Humvee rolling underneath me down the MSR.
Then a white SUV pulled up to the light and I heard this kid ask his J.Crew-looking dad, “Daddy? Why’s that man holding a sign?”
J.Crew looks over at me, then looks away, then the light changes, and they drive off.
I can hear him chuckle, driving away: “Why’s he holding up a sign, son? Well, he’s holding up that sign because that’s what happens to people who don’t go to college. That’s what happens to people who don’t have a plan.” Or something like that, anyway.
There was a homeless guy pushing a shopping cart full of empties up the street, so I called him over, waving a couple dollar bills. I said I had an emergency to go take care of, and I’d pay him to hold the sign for me. I told him I’d be gone for an hour and when I came back I’d give him another five bucks. He said that’s cool, so I gave him the two dollars and handed him the sign and the red hat and the backpack with the sunscreen, and gave him the same instructions my boss gave me. He really went at it, right off the bat, twirling the sign, dancing, jumping, the whole works, a hell of a lot better than I ever could. I told him he was a natural, great job, keep it up.
I put my OIF hat back on and took the next bus back to Hollywood.
* * *
A couple days later, I noticed a 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente parked right across the street from my hotel. I rubbed my eyes, then with my eyes refocused stared at the vehicle. It looked almost exactly like mine. Same color and everything. Only difference was this one had a parking ticket on it, but then when I saw the blue infantry cord hanging from the rearview mirror, I was like holy fucking shit.
I raced toward the vehicle to see if there was any damage, and surprisingly there wasn’t any. The doors were all unlocked and my duffle bag full of clothes was still right there in the back seat. The only thing I noticed different was that there was pigeon shit all over the hood. That was new.
I pulled out my cellphone and called the number on the card the detective at the station had given me. The cop on the line asked for my location, and I gave him the cross streets. He advised me to wait right there and not touch anything, and they’d send a car down as soon as possible.
I took a seat on the curb and waited patiently. A Mexican lady watered her dead lawn with a hose. Five ciga
rettes later, a black-and-white rolled up and two of LA’s finest stepped out. Both female, and not hard on the eyes either: one dykey-looking brunette and a black chick with a bubble butt.
With her hands on her hips, the black chick asked, “You the guy who found his car?”
“Yeah,” I grinned, “that’s me.”
She asked me what the situation was. I explained, “Well, the situation was, I was just walking down the street, and I looked over and I saw this car parked here, and I was like holy shit, that looks like my car. Then when I walk up to it, I’m like holy shit that is my car! And like I checked it out, and I don’t think it was stolen or anything because the doors were all unlocked and my duffle bag’s still in the back seat.”
The brunette cop asked me where I lived. Without even thinking, I turned and pointed, “I live right there, on the fifth floor.”
They both stood there and stared at me.
“You mean to tell me that you live in that building right there, on the other side of the street, and you don’t remember parking your car here?”
Searching for the right words to explain to them the situation, I said, “I know, I know this looks bad, but I swear to fucking god, I didn’t park my car here.”
The black chick cop walked over to my vehicle and looked inside of it and asked, “Do you drink much?”
I started to say I didn’t drink, not really, when out of nowhere the brunette cop asked, “You in the military?”
After a second I realized I had my OIF hat on and said, “Yeah. I was. I’m out now. I’m an Iraq vet.” I pointed at the hat.
The two of them nodded together like they just solved a Rubik’s Cube. Black chick cop shook her head. “All you guys come back, get drunk, get DUI’s, or get so wasted you don’t even remember where you parked. Then when you find your car, you waste our time by having us come down and do all the paperwork. That’s some shit, soldier. That’s what they teach you in the army?”
“Officer, I swear to fucking god, I did not park my vehicle here.”
But they just rolled their eyes and asked if I knew a guy named Jim Evans. I told them no, and the brunette said that’s funny, because they got a call from him just that morning saying he found his car, and when they showed up, he was like, “Oh, I just got back from Iraq. I got so wasted I forgot where I parked it. Ha, Ha. Sorry!”
Then we filled out the paperwork on the hood of their car. We chatted a little more, and I couldn’t help but think about their hair all pulled back and that tough-ass attitude, and the way the black chick cop’s butt filled out her uniform trousers. Maybe I should look into becoming a cop.
I asked the black chick cop, “So, you have a number I should call if something comes up?”
“9-1-1, hero,” she said. “Don’t drink and drive, alright?”
“Roger,” I said. Then they got in their car and drove off.
I got in mine, rolled down the window, and grabbed the parking ticket off the windshield. I started the engine and turned on the radio. There was this song I’d never heard before, talking about some girl and how things were gonna change. I lit a smoke and rolled out, headed for who knows where—somewhere, anyway.
Down on the floor of the passenger side, I noticed some In-N-Out wrappers. At first I didn’t pay too much attention, but then they started bugging me. I didn’t even eat at In-N-Out, couldn’t remember the last time I went there. I started to wonder if maybe some kids had jacked the car to go joyriding and pick up some drive-thru. Then while I was idling at a red light it slowly dawned on me, bits and pieces of this dream I had the other night where I walked into this In-N-Out totally wasted. I demanded that they super-size my meal, and the hajji dude behind the counter kept on telling me they didn’t do the “super size.” I kept arguing with him then finally got my food and smashed my Coke all over the floor and shouted, “Fuck this shit!” Then it had this weird part, the dream, where I stumbled out of the In-N-Out while everybody else in line just stared at me, and it was just like when I got back from Iraq and there was the same line of staring faces saying welcome home.
8
TELEVISION
Roman Skaskiw
IT’D BEEN A DAY SINCE THE ATTACK, and Lieutenant Sugar had not had a chance to see if Joe was okay. Sergeant Joe Zabitosky, aka Sergeant Alphabet, was a squad leader in Lieutenant Sugar’s platoon. He and his squad were hit with an IED after picking up a scout team and returning along Route Lion. It demolished a windshield and rang eardrums, but there was no follow-up ambush, there were no secondary IEDs, and it was just a single blast between trucks—not a daisy chain of detonations. No one was hurt, just a local kid they shot.
Lieutenant Sugar wasn’t there when the IED went off because he and his two other squads were guarding a knot of highways called “the Mixing Bowl.” It had been getting more dangerous for convoys rolling through, and his platoon had been working in shifts, watching cars go by and waiting for something, anything, to happen. When Sergeant Alphabet’s squad was hit, Lieutenant Sugar got his map board out and waited for a break in the radio chatter to see if they needed support. They didn’t.
Lieutenant Sugar sat there drinking warm water from a dusty bottle and watching traffic while he thought about his squad leader and about his own role as a newly minted officer. Of course Sergeant Alphabet could handle it, but still, Lieutenant Sugar felt responsible. He didn’t know if guys would take it hard, like they do on television. They’d been in the country for five months now and their big moment of truth hadn’t yet come. Maybe this was the moment. And maybe he just missed the whole thing.
Since taking over the platoon, Sugar struggled with his third squad leader—the big, loud staff sergeant named Joe Zabitosky, Sergeant Alphabet. The guy came on too strong, pushed his soldiers too hard—in physical training, in the cleanliness of their weapons, in being at the right place at the right time. All these were virtues, sure, but his soldiers were scared of him. They were timid. And he was defensive too. “Don’t talk to my men,” Sergeant Alphabet once told Sugar, “talk to me. I’m their squad leader.”
It happened during a field problem back at Fort Bragg. Sugar had just taken over the platoon, and Alphabet said it loud and angry in front of the soldiers. Sugar made the mistake of not settling it then and there. Instead, he raised the issue with his platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class McPherson, who had a talk with Alphabet. Humiliating. Sugar felt determined to not let it happen again. Not now. Not here, in Iraq.
Lieutenant Sugar didn’t see what happened with the attack, and he didn’t see what happened afterward, but he had a sense of it. After five months of other companies and platoons seeing action of their own, he had a sense of how things worked.
* * *
When the attack was reported over the radio, a breathless private sprinted from the Tactical Operations Center to the Aid Station where the battalion surgeon, Major Roscoe, watched a DVD with the medics. Scraps of cardboard shaded the windows of their hooch, and the blue light from the television shone on their faces. Two medics watched from their cots, a third sat in a plastic lawn chair. Major Roscoe sat in his camping chair. He lifted the DVD remote from a mesh cup holder, paused the movie, and faced the private. He asked how long ago it happened, how many people were hurt, and what injuries there were. All the medics looked up.
He couldn’t answer. He sprinted back to the Tactical Operations Center holding his slung M4 carbine against his hip with one arm, and swinging the other as he ran.
Major Roscoe and the medics turned back to the movie, but it wasn’t there the same way it had been. When the private returned and told them a local boy was coming with a head wound, they turned off the television and walked to the bay to prepare for the boy’s arrival.
* * *
As Sergeant Alphabet’s patrol re-entered the wire, one of the scouts held a bandage against the boy’s ear. The other had gotten an IV started and held the bag up to keep the drip going. Guys from Alphabet’s squad saw the boy show his teeth. His s
houlders climbed up to his ears, and his feet and hands curled into tight claws and stayed that way.
After giving the kid to the medics, Sergeant Alphabet had to see the battalion intelligence officer, who kept him waiting in a corridor, then sat down next to him with a legal pad and, in a tired voice, asked him what happened. He took occasional notes and twice reminded Sergeant Alphabet to limit his explanation to observable facts. “It looked like he set it off,” Sergeant Alphabet said, “so I shot him.”
Sergeant Alphabet was directed to the Colonel’s office.
“He wants to see me?” Alphabet asked.
“He wants to see every patrol leader who makes contact,” the intelligence officer said.
The Colonel was a small, neat, aggressive man. He ate a riblet dinner from a paper tray, dipping spoonfuls of corn into a bright red sauce. He spoke between bites and hurried because of the staff meeting he’d called to prepare for the big upcoming mission. They planned to bring everything on this one: Apaches, fixed wing. This would be the biggest one yet.
The Colonel apologized for having to hurry and wiped his lips many times with a napkin. He told Sergeant Alphabet how important it was to get these guys when they hit us. “Hit them right back,” he said, “or else they’ll keep coming.” And while he made it very clear that Sergeant Alphabet did nothing wrong, he encouraged him to think about what he could have done differently, if anything at all, that would have resulted in getting these guys, or in not hurting the kid, unless of course the kid set off the IED. “In that case,” the Colonel said, “shooting him was the right answer.”
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Alphabet said. “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.”
“It’s like we’re a bunch of pussies,” Sergeant Alphabet later told his platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class McPherson. “I do my job and everybody acts like I pissed in their Cheerios.”
The tired intelligence officer wrote a number on a red sticker and pressed it onto a satellite image already marked with many red, yellow, green, and blue stickers. Neither he, nor the Colonel, nor Alphabet, or Lieutenant Sugar, who was still at the Mixing Bowl, heard the medevac helicopter touching down, or, seconds later, lifting off with the kid. It was just another sound, and not one of the important ones like the whomp of incoming.
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